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Progress on the tank wagons... And bricks being laid on the road bridge...

Work on the layout is temporarily paused whilst I wait for some bricks to be delivered, so I’ve been doing a bit more work on the rolling stock. First on the workbench is resident 08, 08489, a Chester air only machine in 1986, so very much at home at Christleton. Every now and again I have a tinker with it to try to improve its running and it’s now at the stage where I’m happy enough to weather it. As I spend a few days each year cleaning the muck off an 08, I feel suitably qualified to apply the dirt! I could do with some gloss black on the oiling points to prove I’ve been around with the oil can. The 08 makes an occasional trip working round to Chester with some fuel tanks, dropped off on the morning Speedlink service. I find weathering tanks quite a challenge, mainly because the real thing looks unconvincingly weathered! Here we see three tanks on the bench. Left to right are box fresh, factory weathered and my second attempt at weathering a TTA. It needs a bit more touching up, mainly to cover the glare of the Esso logos.

Crikey that is some volume of stock to unleash in one go! Are they all sound fitted too, or just DCC? It suddenly feels like a model railway when you start running trains! I would do quite a bit of running and try all your moves that you anticipate - you may find some changes might be beneficial for optimum operation (I speak from hard learnt experience). Much easier pre-ballasting. It’s also worth taking a lot of photos of the track to check you’re happy with the visual alignment. The camera is much more observant than the eye for some reason. I did a lot of nudging of track pre-ballasting. Great progress and keen to start talking about consists and operations!

I think we both appreciate some honesty in our posts but I’ll be leaving my kitchen unit doors closed! I also note we share the same collection of sh*t / important materials for future use. I always think my wiring is really simple, there’s just a lot of it. Maybe that’s because I know how complicated it could be...

I am indeed a signal engineer and an electronic engineer by background. Neither of these give you any kind of head start with wiring a model railway, other than some misplaced confidence perhaps. The only common basic is that all electronic and electrical equipment is manufactured with a puff of smoke tightly packed inside it. Never do anything that will release that smoke! Or in simple terms, make sure you protect stuff if you're likely to touch positive to negative. The following simple drawing may help explain my wiring. Microsoft Visio's insistence on routing the wires in its own paths makes it look more untidy than I would like! Heart of the system is the NCE procab with a cab bus (on the left), to allow multiple throttles to be connected. That's all standard stuff. The two wires out of the procab feed out to the track via a circuit breaker (to protect the smoke in the procab). If you only want a DCC system, then you only need half of what is to the right of the circuit breaker. I have one set of track feeds going via a DPDT switch to allow one track to be connected to DC controller (H&M Duette, model railway standard issue). This allows my inner circle to run on DC for loco testing, whilst everything with a DCC chip in it sits safely on the outer track or sidings. I never run DC and DCC at the same time, in case a mis-set crossover causes shorting between systems, but this avoids having to pick all the locos up off the track whilst I do any testing. The pairs of earth blocks then go off to each board, via bespoke cables I made using D-type cables. You could use off the shelf cables, but mine carry my solenoid point motor feeds too, which need some oomph. In the event of a serious fault (not happened yet), you can unplug each board's feed cable and see which board is at fault. On each board, I have split the track into sections, but you could treat all the track as one. I jumper each rail to the next one in line, rather than feeding each rail direct from the earth block. This makes fault finding really easy, as the location of the dead section tells you which wire has broken. A basic meter (of the £10 variety) will have a continuity tester making this method of fault finding really simple. If you're using a reasonable size wire (16/0.2 has a cross section of 1.6mm2 and is thicker cross section than your 1.5mm2 house lighting circuit fused at 10A) then you'd need to go a lot further than 45 feet before you get into any issues.

I use pretty much the same system, but I use 24/0.2 for everything. I would echo your advice too. Buy wire bigger than you think you need and buy more of it. Christleton is on its 3rd roll of 100m (all wiring is the same black 24/0.2, using labels and sleeves for identification). I have split my layout into one power bus for each board, which can be disconnected for fault finding. I also wired my inner circle separately to everything else, with a DPDT, to allow testing of new locos on DC power.

Some days model railways are just sent to try us! Despite doing no modelling all day, I have learnt that pre-mixed polyfilla could be a useful form of concrete on the railway, so quite the opposite of your day! I think no matter how much you plan your wiring, there will always be a possibility that a lose (or worse, an intermittent) connection will waste hours of your time. I had an occasionally dodgy pick up on my 03 combine with a poor soldered connection to my fiddle yard (which is still reliant on fishplates for conductivity). 4 hours of head scratching and about 6 seconds to fix once I’d worked it out. Fortunately I was ahead of the game and modelled a brewery. I’ve gone to a lot of effort to ensure the quality of the beer on these occasions!

Now here’s a photo with some issues. At first glance we see a 45/0 on a Saltley to Holyhead liner taking the through road passing a 25/1 on parcels. Then you look closely. The 45/0 has ETH. The sealed beam peaks use to be like rocking horse dung and I bought this for a steal some time ago. It came in a 45/1 non-sound fitted split box green liveried box; presumably the previous owner did a simple body swap... looks like this may be an easy (ish) conversion to a 45/1 - just the body step plates to smooth out? Then you look again and you’ll see the 25/1 is missing a water tank between the bogies. I don’t think any 25/1s had them removed. I could swap the body with my 25/2 to make a 25/3, but I don’t know if the bodies are identical (or close)? If they are I could then upgrade it to a 25/9.

With the sky painted in undercoat (B&Q infinite universe), a class 85 arrives on a Bristol to Edinburgh service, whilst 40122 waits the right away on a railtour working to the West Midlands. Meanwhile at the North end, classic 80’s trans-pennine action sees a large logo 47 bringing in a Scarborough to Bangor service. Normally rostered for a 45, it seems Toton are waiting to see how the Heljan 45/1 looks before making any commitments.

Like pretty much everything else on the layout it will be brick. Possibly dark engineering bricks. Whilst my location is “not quite” Chester, my inspiration is Deansgate to Oxford Road.

Despite being serially distracted, not least by the sunshine, I have managed to get the woodwork for the bridge cut. I believe the cool kids are referring to this as a scenic break! Hopefully I can have buildings at each end of the bridge to help hide the awkward road / sky interface.

Quite early in the day to be drinking... I’m just a first timer with no concept of “outside of your ability”. I’ll try anything. Just like doing an old house up, ensure you know where to turn the water off and crack on!

When I write it up it will be a sit down with a cup of tea and cake moment. But I’m not doing that until it works (and I’m awaiting parts at the moment).

I accept the sprinters were a necessary evil, but they could have been a lot nicer inside. We seem to have lost our way with the interior on trains. Modern european stock is often significantly nicer, and that’s not a cost thing, just better design.

I think it’s good to have a few ‘honest’ layouts to share experiences with. It’s nice to be at a similar stage to someone else too (so slow down). There will shortly be a warts and more warts description of fitting my 87 with sound, but I’ll continue fitting my own locos now I know what I’m doing.

I’ve just spent a really enjoyable hour (or more) reading from start to finish. Really enjoyed seeing the progress and I appreciated your honesty - nice to know I’m not alone in beginner’s errors! I’m really looking forward to seeing this develop and learning more about Mallaig in 1983. Even if single class 20’s plays havoc with my OCD! Kadees are on my to consider list (but it’s a long list), so I’m keen to know more about them, especially in NEM pockets. I have to say 3 link couplings on freight are a joy, but I do have one awkward corner I can’t reach! I bought a platform 5 stock book for 1986 for about £3 on ebay and that’s been invaluable for loco and coach numbers, not least some of the more obscure stuff - like mixing air / vac and ETH / steam. Looking forward to more!

From what I know that sounds about right. Certainly in CP7 I think. An additional block section should actually be quite straightforward, at least in theory.

Implementation. My only recollection of the plans was that the fringe to Junction turned out to be excessively complicated for red, yellow or green!

The March 87 introduction on the Tran-Pennines was all 150/2s, as they had corridor connections on the ends. The 150/1s did the initial roll-out in 86 on local (ish) services. There were only two 150/0s with centre coaches, and I had the joy of them on the Stourbridge lines until unexpectedly loco hauled became an option!

Our paths have almost certainly crossed professionally as I re-signalled the line to your East in 2018. I'd like to get my hands on your 'box one day, but it's nothing personal! North Wales was probably the last place you could regularly see both types of 16 wheelers, with the 40's carrying on in 97 guise. I don't think they ran anywhere else that would regularly see 45s.

I remember being excited about trying the Sprinters out. Such a staggering disappointment. I can’t believe any passenger saw it as a positive. In about 87 we had a 142 on a previously loco-hauled Blackpool Leeds. There was a chap on there looking for the first class, so we pointed him in the direction of the compartment in the middle of the train!

83 would make sense, there are a number of pictures of peaks on PV mk2s from 83-86. "Loco-Hauled travel 1986" has the following diagrams (its fairly complicated, but affectively each diagram runs each way): 2 x 33/0 (from Crewe) 6 x 45/1 (Trans-Pennine) 5 x 47/4 (from Euston / West Midlands) 1 x 47/4 (from Cardiff) 14 loco hauled diagrams in each direction, plus relief services (another 4 on a summer weekend?). "Colour of North Wales Coast" records class 150/2s on the first day of trans-pennine sprinter operation as 16 March 87, with local services becoming 150s from May 86 (which is suspended in my world until Jan 87!)

I have pictures of 25s on the Llandudno to Man Vic services in the mid eighties. I think they became the Llandudno to Scarboroughs in 85 and moved to type 4 power. As varied as the motive power seems to be, it works out that just about every other train is a 47. PCM put me on to a great source of loco-hauled information and I’m busy converting that into schedule for Christleton. It’s very interesting seeing the different diagrams from the time.

My 1986 platform 5 has 13 115 DMBS allocated to Allerton (AN) and 7 TCLs, one of which was still all over blue. By 1987 the DMBS were still at Allerton, but the centre cars had move to Tyseley. The blue one was still blue.

I was only 12 when the Peaks bowed out, but I remember being terrified of the peak army - goodness knows what the regular passengers made of them. They’re still a bit of a handful on a diesel even now, although the zimmer frames seem less threatening. The 45s only became North Wales regulars in 84(or 85?), when the Scarborough and Newcastle services were extended beyond Manchester to Holyhead, Bangor and Llandudno. I think it also put paid to 25s on services on the Coast, as well as 40s, so mixed blessings. I shall now further delay the Easter weekend DIY and go investigate your layout. I know almost nothing about that period and location, except for some cracking layouts back in the late 80s in the modeller and constructor. Every now and then you see a picture of a 26 that escaped south and I start building stories about one making it to Chester!